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Plan For Financial Security After Personal Injury

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Whether you've been injured in a car accident, a slip and fall or a fight, the costs of your injuries can go far beyond medical bills. Lost wages, lower earning potential and less enjoyment in life all have a major impact on your financial future. Before accepting a personal injury settlement, consider a few factors of financial changes in the future that can affect how the settlement works for you.

Earning Potential Versus Injury Effects

Even if you're able to return to your old job after an injury, you may not be at your maximum potential. From physical labor issues with pain and stiffness to clouded thought while working on mentally taxing situations, that injury may have dampened your ability to perform.

It can affect the bottom line of the company through your productivity, but it also may affect your ability to be promoted. You may be a loyal and trusted worker, but colleagues may be able to climb the ladder faster than you due to your limitations. Even something as subtle as a periodic throbbing pain may stop you from being as attractive for promotion or for impressing clients.

Your company may even understand the issue and judge you differently, either subconsciously or through business need. It's not fair, but it's not impossible to fill the gap with compensation from your legal opponent.

If your working ability is impacted, they need to pay for it. Work with your employer and a personal injury attorney to paint a picture about just how much you and the company stand to lose because of your injury and its aftereffects. There may be some resistance, as it's different to prove abstract costs such as promotion potential and lost future performance, but it allows you to increase the upper limit of negotiations.

Start high and negotiate down as needed if necessary. With an affected employer and financial facts behind you, the damage becomes more clear.

Stabilize Your Earning Potential When Cash Isn't Viable

If you aren't able to extract as much real money from your legal opponent as you want, look to the education system to stabilize your earning potential instead.

An injury has an effect on your earning potential, so it may be time to shift your career. You can either train for another position with your company that offers the same or greater earnings without aggravating your injuries, or you may be in a position where you have to find an entirely new career.

Job training and college tuition may be expensive and just as unlikely to succeed in settlement negotiations, but there are ways to make the offer more attractive to your legal adversary. If your opponent can acquire relevant, quality education opportunities, the amount they spend shouldn't matter.

For example, if your legal opponent has connections at a school or a grant writer with talent in getting you into a good education system, their costs may be as low as the grant writer's fees. Even better, if you live in a state that offers free or low cost college, your legal opponent may be able to leave the negotiation table with just administrative fees and housing allowance while you study.

Contact a personal injury lawyer (such as one from Boucher Law Firm) to begin planing your financial security negotiations and protect your best interests.


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